Closed cases may not be as fascinating, but they should still provide a sense of relief.
Wanting to give these cases the spotlight, Redditor PinV928 asked:
"What are some SOLVED mysteries?"
There was closure for these cases involving missing persons and murder.
The McStay Family
"The McStay family disappearance and murders. In February of 2010, the McStay's, a family of 4 (Mom Summer, Dad Joseph, and sons Gianni and Joseph jr) seemingly vanished from their home- abruptly. A carton of eggs was left open on the counter and the family dogs were still outside in the backyard. The scene was eerie, and complicated because the home the McStays lived in was in the process of being renovated- so a 'neat and orderly' home wasn't the norm at this stage. It appeared there was missing furniture and the usual mess that comes with construction (some freshly painted or redone surfaces mixed with older versions). From the outside- it appeared the family just took off. Neighbor had surveillance that captured what appeared to be the bottom of the family SUV leaving the driveway."
"Since they were living in California, the border to Mexico wasn't far and authorities found footage of what appeared to be the McStay's walking into Mexico with their two little boys in tow. The family SUV was found abandoned in a mall parking lot near the Mexico border. 3 years passed before the bodies of the McStay's were found buried in shallow graves in the California desert. The bodies appeared to be in advanced decomposition and there were signs of blunt force trauma. A sledgehammer was also found buried with one of the bodies. Chase Merritt, a business partner to Joseph McStay, was arrested and charged with their murders on 11/5/2014. His trial was delayed for years until 2019. He was sentenced to death. Motive: Chase had a gambling addiction and had been and continued embezzling money from the business. His DNA was found in the McStay's abandoned vehicle. He bludgeoned this beautiful family to death for money."
"ETA link with more info - https://people.com/crime/mcstay-family-murders-killer-sentenced-death/"
– Zombiemoon78
Screenwriter's Alleged Suicide
"The Case of Adrienne Shelly - screenwriter for Waitress. Husband came home to find her hanging in the shower - ruled suicide."
"He insists she was happy and would never kill herself promoting another view of crime scene where they found a shoe print that matched a construction worker in the building."
"Sure enough the construction worker went to rob her and thought he killed her so staged a suicide when the hanging ended up being the actual thing that killed her."
– Juniper338
Abducted Japanese Girls
"In the 1970s, a number of Japanese citizens disappeared from coastal areas in Japan. After many years it was found out that North Korea had abducted them."
"North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens"
"Most of the missing were in their 20s; the youngest, Megumi Yokota, was 13 when she disappeared in November 1977, from the Japanese west coast city of Niigata."
– your-playboy
A Baby's Death
"The death of Azaria Chamberlain - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Azaria_Chamberlain"
"She was a two-month old girl who disappeared while camping with her parents near Uluru. Prosecutors successfully tried her mother for murder and father as an accessory. During the entire ordeal it was insisted by her mother that Azaria was taken by dingoes, native wild dogs in Australia. This was disregarded, as before this there were no records of dingoes showing any hostility towards humans or causing any attacks or fatalities nearby."
"Several years later, an unrelated search not far from the campground found a child's coat, of the exact brand and description Azaria's mother gave to the police, in an area littered with Dingo dens. The parents conviction was overturned and the case was established that in reality, she had been taken from her parents tent during the night, killed and eaten by dingos."
– XtwVAlllO
The Attack On Dan Rather
"Dan Rather was attacked and beaten on a New York street by two men who kept demanding, 'What's the frequency, Kenneth?' He was rescued by a doorman, and the two guys got away. For years, no one knew who they were."
"Then a man invaded NBC Studios and killed a stage hand. When captured, he explained that the networks were beaming radio messages into his head. He wanted to know the frequency they were using so he could jam the signals. Dan Rather was shown a mugshot and positively identified his attacker."
"Here's a New York Times article on it."
– SpecificMost19
The water kept these mysteries unsolved for years.
Antoine deSaint-Exupery
"The disappearance of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, who was also a French reconnaissance pilot during World War II."
"In 1944, he took off on a reconnaissance mission from Corsica and never made it back, and there was never any evidence of what might have happened to him and his plane."
"Finally, in 1998, a French fisherman pulled up his net and found wrapped in it a silver bracelet engraved with Saint-Exupery's name, and in 2004, a diver searched in the area and found the remains of his plane, which had apparently been shot down by a German fighter after all."
– BitterestLily
People Share The 'Dirty Secrets' That Their Bosses Don't Want Customers To Know
More Than A Century Later
"The Erebus and the Terror were found a few years ago. The two ships were part of an artic expedition and dissapeared 150 years ago."
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition"
Icy Grave
"1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply 'STENDEC.' After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. For years conspiracy theories and talk of Alien abduction circulated."
"Till 1998, when mountain climbers on a remote mountain found an engine, pieces of metal, and clothing at the bottom of a glacier on the side of Mount Tupungato. Turns out the aircraft got caught flying the wrong way in the jet stream while it was flying at night and using a system of timing when to start their decent. Being in the jet stream reduced their airspeed in relation to the earth and they smacked themselves straight into the side of a mountain, after which an avalanche covered the wreckage. The wreckage took decades to flow down the side of the mount with the glaciers. The glacier preserved the wreck so well that 50 years later the recovery team found identifiable remains, personal items, and could read serial numbers on the engines. Amazing one of the landing gear tires was still inflated, and that teams continued to visit the site for periodically as more of the aircraft, cargo, and remains of passengers are still emerging from the ice."
– OldWhoFan
The Windsor Hum
"Residents of Windsor (Canada) have been saying they could hear a hum coming from across the river in Detroit for the better part of a few decades. Well turns out that when a steel producer turned their furnaces off recently (when they were closing up shop) the Hum stopped. People had no idea what the noise could be until the factory closed."
"Edit: also a little fun fact; Zug Island (where the factory was located) was mentioned in Robocop and was also the destination of the SS Edmond Fitzgerald before it sank."
Where The River Runs
"Devil's Kettle Falls: A stream separates into two sections, one continues normally the other spirals deep into a hole. All sorts of things were thrown down the hole in an effort to discover where the water went. Ping pong balls, various dyes, it was even rumored that someone stuck an old car down there. Eventually someone came up with a clever idea, they measured the total water flow above and below the falls and discovered they were similar enough to deduce the two streams join back up relatively quickly."
– 3riversfantasy
We'll Never Let Go, Jack
"Where is the Titanic? (Most people don't realize that half of the people in the world grew up when the ship's location was still a complete mystery. Now, it's old news."
– SyzoBAZ
There were logical explanations for these seemingly otherworldly phenomena.
What The "Bloop?"
"The Bloop"
"In 1997 a really weird and loud noise was detected underwater and everyone was all 'WTF was that?.' In 2012 it was determined it was an iceberg breaking and/or rubbing against the seabed."
– Herp_derpelson
Misinterpreted Legend
"El Dorado or the lost city of gold turned out to be a mistranslation. It was just the name of some guy that got mistranslated to the name of a city."
– Myalltimehate
Fake Tears
"Weeping Jesus statue in India mystery. Apparently a Jesus statue started crying and all Christians along with Hindus started to drink it. It turned out to be sewage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeping_crucifix_in_Mumbai"
– beingbond
The Prophet Hen Of Leeds
"A hen was laying eggs with messages like "Christ is Coming" and people thought the world was ending. Turned out the farmer was actually writing on the eggs herself, and then reinserted it back into the chicken. edited for gender of the farmer."
– Incomnia_
For Christ's Sake
"The tomb of Jesus' previously unknown brother turned out to be a hoax to try to sell the tomb of a nobody for a lot of money."
– Myalltimehate
The North Atlantic Vortex
"Bermuda Triangle / devils sea... a triangle shaped section of ocean where airplanes and boats were known to disappear."
"Apparently most stories were embellished, and there is so much traffic that goes through the area it's actually a very small amount of vessels that go missing (percentage wise)."
The "Terrible Hand"
"What Deinocheirus looked like."
"When I was a kid in the 80s, all that was known were the bones of the arms with enormous claws. Hence its name, 'terrible hand.' They were mostly shown grasping a small car because they were so freaking huge. The rest of the animal was a complete mystery. Was it like a giant Allosaurus, one that'd make the T-Rex look like a puppy in comparison? A few years later it seemed more likely to be ostrich-like and an omnivore. Either way, given how rare it is for fossils to form at all, I was convinced I'd die never knowing what this dinosaur actually looked like."
"Then surprisingly in 2014, they found more bones and it was just the weirdest thing."
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinocheirus"
– riceandvegetable
The Pioneer Gravity Anomaly
"Space probe wasn't accelerating away from Earth the way we'd predicted, but it didn't get noticed until the probe got way the f'k out there."
"Next space probe gets launched, gets way out there, same thing happens. WTF? How does acceleration not work right? Does gravity just change really far away?"
"Turns out the heat from the radioactive death generator was all coming off the same side of the space probe, and the extra particle radiation gave a 'thermal recoil force' resulting in an extra acceleration of -- no kidding -- about 0.000000000874 m/s2."
"Over enough distance, it all counts."
– Laceogra
Closed cases and logical explanations are all well and good, but there is one phenomenon that continues to plague me.
Where do missing socks go? Seriously. It's a common occurrence where I'm left with a lone sock and the other is never caught in the lint trap or lost in the pile. They just vanish without a trace, I know I'm not alone in this.
Solving that mystery is not about having closure or putting my mind at ease so I can sleep at night.
I'm just tired of repeatedly buying new pairs of socks just because one sock goes rogue. Is it a New York laundry thing? Who knows?
But please enlighten me before I give up on socks and go with Crocs all the way.
This was, obviously, false - bonsai kittens were clever photoshop combined with pictures of cats just being cats. But to young me, someone new to internet, with no idea of how powerful photoshop and suggestion could be, and a rampant case of preteen hyperempathy, those images were unsettling.
I lost sleep for weeks - first concerned that the images were real; and then concerned that some unsavory character would decide the photoshop wasn't enough and it was time to try it for real. The poor imaginary kittens in my anxiety-riddled mind...
I forgot about it until years later, when someone mentioned bonsai kittens as an internet mystery they never quite got the full story about. Thing is, there are countless things floating around on the internet that people just ... aren't sure about. Are they real? Hoaxes? Viral marketing? Something totally innocent but set to creepy music?
One Reddit user asked:
What mysteries from the early days of the internet are still unsolved to this day?
So here we go, once more down the rabbit hole ...
Chiclet Teeth
There was that guy in the middle 90's who designed his girlfriend using software. He ended up with something like a mug shot, then posted it, hoping to find her in real life.
He swore he was in love with her, this image he had created. He became an immediate laughingstock.
I can't locate any links, but I remember one person referring to the girl as "Chiclet teeth."
Anyway, I wonder if the guy ever found her.
- woofoo2
Clean The Skulls Before Sale
animated art GIF by Falcao LucasGiphyI remember that extremely creepy video of a young guy with longish hair and a very odd way of speaking (I think it was a combination of accent and speech impediment) talking about grave robbing and how to prep the remains for sale. I remember specifically him going into great detail into how to properly clean out the skulls so they wouldn't rattle when you shook them. Nobody ever came up with an identity, location, or even a solid answer for who was buying the human remains or why.
Anyway, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it for a long time, because last year a man where I live was arrested for doing the exact same thing. He was digging up graves, taking the remains, and methodically cleaning them for sale. Sale to who?? For what reason?? It literally drives me insane.
A Guessing Game
Wouldn't say early internet but interesting nonetheless. There was a multitude of killers who have posted on 4Chan one who asked the question "What does /b/ keep in the freezer?" they then proceeded to post pictures of body parts with timestamps to prove it authentication. Another one was (again 4Chan) a guessing name of a missing person and provided a freebie which when guessed correctly lead to the co-ordinates of where the body was buried.
Yeah, the coordinates one was originally posted as a thread with a pic of the missing girl and the message "if this thread gets trips, I'll tell you where to find her" with 'trips' meaning a triplicate number in the post number (eg 222, or 777, etc) which was not something you could see ahead of time
Someone made a reply in the thread with trips, and the OP replied with gps coordinates. 2 days later someone posted a news article from the nearby city with an update about the girls body being found.
I was on there when it happened. We all thought the guy was full of sh*t until the news broke.
Heaven's Gate
The Heavens Gate website is still up and running, but the real question is who is paying for it to stay up?
I'm pretty sure it's just one guy running it. He left the cult before they did the suicides and then rejoined it I guess. I'm pretty sure he's the only person alive who still believes it. Sad, sad stuff
Can someone explain what heaven's gate is and what does it do ?
A UFO cult that eventually became a suicide cult. Members were obsessed with Star Trek and general sci-fi/fantasy weirdness, and made frequent use of the Internet to make money and spread their theology. They believed, among other things, that malevolent aliens called "Luciferians" had infiltrated all major religions to keep humans from developing as a species, that God is actually a very advanced alien, and that their leaders' bodies were regularly taken over by alien "walk-ins." They wound up killing themselves when Comet Halle-Bopp came around, believing that their consciousnesses would be transported to an invisible starship in the comet's tail after their bodies' physical deaths (and, unlike the Jonestown massacre, the deaths seemed to be voluntary—as voluntary as they could be in a cult, anyway.)
They relied on the Internet a lot when they were around, and made most of their money by offering website design and cybersecurity services. Their original website is still up today, in all of its '90s HTML glory, and if you email the person running it, he'll probably respond to you. It's incredibly unnerving to read.
Ted's Excellent Adventure
The guy who went caving. He ends his blog with 'I'll let you know what I find.' And then it just ends. Google Ted's caving and it's the first result!
That was the first and literally last thing I ever read from that website years ago and I still think about it sometimes at night and it scares me lol
- ahr3
It was solved it was confirmed fake. It started out real but eventually the guy decided to write a fiction thingymajig.
- Havoq12
For those interested in learning more about the story behind the story: https://grahamjw.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/ted-the-caver-mystery/
Even as fiction, it's still a masterful work of suspense! Major kudos to the author for crafting a story that's held up this well for so long.
How To? How 'Bout No.Â
I somehow stumbled onto a very disturbing website called something like howtobeaserialkiller.com. That's not exactly the right url, but it's close. I probably found it through Stileproject.com. It was full of information that seemed like it might actually really help someone to get away with killing strangers, for instance; using a heavy duty zip tie to suffocate them so your hands would be free to hold them down; or rolling dice to decide what kind of person to kill next so there wouldn't be an obvious pattern.
I tried to show a friend what I had found a couple weeks later and the site had been removed with a simple message remaining, "How to be a serial killer has been removed. If you're really interested in killing someone why don't you start with yourself." I'd like to know what the hell inspired someone to create such a site and why did they decide to remove it.
Amazon Submarine
In the early days of the internet there was a site which purported to show a massive submarine base being built in the middle of the Amazon - it was documented through a series of photos developed form a camera that had been found in the jungle.
The theory was that the camera had been thrown from an airplane that had flown over the base just prior to being shot down.
This is NOT a drugs submarine base, but rather something else entirely - it was in the MIDDLE of the Brazilian Amazon, far from any body of water, and the submarine itself was GIANT.
The conjecture was that the elite of the world knew something about coming cataclysmic floods that would envelope the planet and so had built themselves an escape submarine - an Ark - out there in the sticks.
I saw this site in the very, very early days of the web... it was one of the few sites to visit with the new web browsers of the time.
But try as I might I simply cannot find any trace of this site any more, it has vanished and even the Internet Archive has no reference to it.
Was pretty interesting that's for sure. The sub looked huge and the pictures of it quite legitimate....
- ibisum
AmputationÂ
One I remember is something along the lines of cutoffmyfeet.com. I don't think its still up, but the gist of it was that a dudes feet were paralyzed and he wanted to cut them off so he could get prosthetics. I don't remember much, there are probably better explanations out there.
Here's a snippet from the old website:
Since Paul is on Medicare/Medicaid, his insurance will not cover the amputation and new prosthetics because it is not deemed a necessary procedure. Paul also receives medical disability and his Medicare plan does not even cover the cost of his catheter bag. Paul doesn't want to fight a no-win battle with the insurance and medical communities in the United States.
Paul is using this event as a chance to speak out against the lack of care in the medical field and the insurance industry. He strongly believes that this could make great strides in the much needed insurance and medical reform in the United States. This amputation is simply Paul's way of saying that even though corporate america has refused him, he will get his new prosthetics and improve his quality of life.
That's actually pretty sad :(
Frozen
frozen GIF by Walt Disney StudiosGiphyThere used to be a huge conspiracy theory that Walt Disney's head was frozen in ice. Whenever you searched the key words "Disney" "Frozen", theories would show up.
By "coincidence" Disney makes the movie Frozen and you cannot search up those key words anymore without being blocked by the movie.
Big Ghost
Who Big Ghost is? He was a hip hop blogger who gave hilarious commentary on hip hop in the voice of Ghostface Killah from wutang. He became a music producer but I never found info on him or his real identity
The Red Spiral
Around early 2000's, my cousin and I were using a very recent beta copy of Google earth (wasn't available to public yet, but people in the computer industry could access it). We found a random location in the middle east, miles from anything.
We found an enormous spiral made of those red markers and zoomed in. We clicked on the red dots and they gave the GPS coordinates and #of people killed there.
In all total it was several hundred killed, but it was strange that information was on Google maps and the it was in the shape of a spiral.
There was some obscure forum on it, but it is all long gone
Beebiss
There is a video game that seemingly never existed called Yeah Yeah Beebiss I, which has a ton of evidence on the internet for it's existence nonetheless. For all practical purposes, no physical evidence of it has ever been found or seen...and yet, actual documentation that it exists or existed at one point remains. Specifically, two actual, well-known businesses which sold and resold video games had it listed in their documents as one of the games they sold and listed for some time. And again these companies RESOLD video games, and they weren't just little out of the way joints either, so logic dictates that someone had to have gone, seen or found Yeah Yeah Beebiss I and estimated a price since, if memory serves, VARIED between the two establishments. So yeah, SOMEONE had to have seen it, but no physical copies have ever been found so far despite legions of people (myself included) searching.
More over, I actually did some research myself, and to be frank there are a ton of OTHER games on the lists that were used to document Yeah Yeah Beebiss I which either were not released in America or released under a different title--this combined with the...to say the very least, somewhat bizarre title Yeah Yeah Beebiss I means that it may in fact have been released either in America or only in Japan but under a wildly different title. Which in turn raises the question of what the everliving fck YEAH YEAH BEEBISS I was supposed to originally mean when it was first announced?!
I'm not the only one searching for this, a ton of other people have been looking for it in the Lost Media niche of the interwebs.
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